So happy you found us. If you have any questions, please feel free to "ask away". We've got folks with years and years of cruising experience, on nearly all the lines, and ships, so you can get accurate and informative answers to questions. Hope to see you aboard one of the fantastic ships in the future!

I'm going on my first cruise with my wife in a couple months and I'm glad I found this site. Hopefully I can find some good tips and pointers and not spend so much time figuring out the schedules and how everything is run.

So, Marsdude,How was your first cruise?? What ship were you on and where did you go? We all love to hear about people's first cruise?

Donna (great name - as it is the same as my wife's), thank you for your interest. I did put up a very short and bad synopsis of the cruise here on the NCL threads.

In short, we had a wonderful cruise. We were on the NCL Dawn out of Miami on 2/26/12. A few observations as a new cruiser:

Coming up to the ship before we boarded the Dawn seemed ENORMOUS! After boarding the ship seemed smaller than I expected, then after I got to really know the ship it seemed much bigger that my initial impression. Has anyone else had that experience?

Another thing that really stood out on the cruise was the amazing crew. What great service! I am in the hospitality industry and was trained in customer service at Harrah's Club in Lake Tahoe many years ago. IMHO the service on the Dawn was exceptional! Sure there was one or two incidents of less than excellent service but that was over a period of 10 days and nearly 24/7. Seriously, a BIG thumbs up to NCL on their crew.

My wife is very picky about food but had no problem finding things she liked to eat. We both thought the food on board at all the venues were very good. The coffee in the buffet - well I drank it and I still live. Lets leave it at that.

We found a lot of the main shows to be a little lame. Not terrible, but not great. Second City we really liked. We went to the "Presumed Murdered" lunch and would recommend it.

I don't want to hijack here so I will keep it really short. In summary let me say that we really enjoyed cruising so much that we have already decided to book another in the fall. Being at sea is wonderful. The crew was wonderful. The people on board we met were great. We enjoyed the food and a lot of the entertainment. What is not to like?

Hey Marsdude, I'm glad you're going on another one. I've only done a few cruise myself but the two i've been on were like that...mostly good, a few little things here and there...but not really anything to complain about...but some people will.....